Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Legnica
Legnica Cathedral, the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, is the largest Gothic church in Legnica (pronounced "leg-NEE-tsah"), a historic city in Lower Silesia, southwestern Poland. Its twin green spires dominate the old town skyline, and…
Hidden gemGardens
Wrocław
The Japanese Garden in Wrocław (VROTS-wahv) is one of the oldest Japanese-style gardens in Central Europe, tucked into Szczytnicki Park next to the UNESCO-listed Centennial Hall. Created for the 1913 Centennial Exhibition, it is a calm oas…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Piechowice
Two rocky bowls carved by glaciers beneath the main ridge of the Karkonosze, with cliffs, gullies and snow that lingers well into spring — Śnieżne Kotły (the Snowy Cirques) form the most alpine landscape in the Polish Sudetes. On their rim…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Karłów
A trapezoid block of rock covered in forest, visible from around Kłodzko and from Náchod in the Czech Republic — this is Szczeliniec Wielki, the highest peak of the Table Mountains. 680 stone steps lead up to the plateau, where a labyrinth…
Hidden gemCastles
Legnica
Piast Castle in Legnica is one of the oldest stone castles in Poland and the former seat of the Piast dukes who ruled this part of Silesia for five centuries. Two Romanesque towers, a Renaissance gateway and the excavated remains of a 13th…
Hidden gemOld towns & squares
Legnica
It was meant to be a vast four-wing complex with two courtyards and a monumental tower, but only the first section was ever built. Even so, Legnica's New Town Hall, erected in 1902–1905, is impressive: five storeys, ornate gables, knights…
Hidden gemPalaces
Kamieniec Ząbkowicki
The Palace of Marianne of Orange in Kamieniec Ząbkowicki (say "kah-MYEN-yets zomb-ko-VEETS-kee") is a vast neo-Gothic castle-style palace in Lower Silesia, southwestern Poland, designed by the great Prussian architect Karl Friedrich Schink…
Hidden gemOld towns & squares
Legnica
With its double flight of steps, mansard roof and onion dome, Legnica's Old Town Hall looks more like a small Baroque palace than an office building. The city's guidebooks call it the finest building of its kind in Lower Silesia. It stands…
Hidden gemCastles
Jawor
Few castles in Poland served as a prison for so long: the Piast residence in Jawor fulfilled that role for more than two hundred years, from the time of Frederick the Great until 1956. Beneath its uniform 19th-century façade, however, hide…
Hidden gemCaves
Trzebieszowice
In a side niche of Radochów Cave, researchers in the 1930s found a cave bear skull covered with a stone slab — and for years people wondered whether a Palaeolithic human had placed it there. This small karst cave in the Golden Mountains, a…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Henryków
"Day, ut ia pobrusa, a ti poziwai" — "let me grind now, and you take a rest" — is what, according to the chronicle, the settler Boguchwał said to his wife as she worked the hand quern. Entered around 1270 in the Latin Book of Henryków, thi…
Hidden gemPalaces
Łomnica
A square, three-storey palace with two corner turrets stands where the roads to Karpniki and Wojanów split, about 5 km from Jelenia Góra. In the early 1990s it was a ruin; today it is one of the liveliest estates in the Valley of Palaces a…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Karpacz
Śnieżka (pronounced roughly "SHNYEZH-kah"; Czech: Sněžka, German: Schneekoppe) is the highest mountain in the Giant Mountains and the whole Sudetes range, rising above the resort town of Karpacz on the Polish–Czech border. Its rocky cone,…
Hidden gemWaterfalls
Szklarska Poręba
Kamieńczyk Waterfall (ka-MYEN-chik) in Szklarska Poręba is the highest waterfall in the Polish Sudetes. The Kamieńczyk stream drops 27 m in three cascades into a narrow granite gorge. Visitors walk down on steel platforms, wearing a helmet…
Hidden gemWaterfalls
Piechowice
Szklarka Waterfall (SHKLAR-ka) is the second-highest waterfall in the Polish Karkonosze, or Giant Mountains, and one of the easiest to reach. A short, flat path through beech woods leads from a parking lot on national road 3 to a viewing p…
Hidden gemLandmarks
Siedlęcin
The Ducal Tower in Siedlęcin (say "shed-WEN-cheen") is a 14th-century residential tower on the Bóbr River, a few kilometers northwest of Jelenia Góra in Lower Silesia. It is among the largest medieval tower houses in Central Europe, but it…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
gmina Mirsk
The highest peak of the Izera Mountains has neither a tower nor a mountain hut — instead it has a gentle, treeless dome covered in meadows, which shows clearly what happened to the forests of the Sudetes in the 1980s. Wysoka Kopa (1,126 m,…
Hidden gemCastles
Proszówka
The castle is said to take its name from a large griffin once painted on the chapel wall. Gryf, Greiffenstein in German, was for almost four centuries the family seat of the Schaffgotsch dynasty — one of the most powerful families in Siles…
Hidden gemCastles
Świny
Świny near Bolków is one of the oldest strongholds in Lower Silesia and the oldest privately owned castle in present-day Poland. The chronicler Cosmas first mentions it under the year 1108, and for five centuries it was the seat of the Świ…
Hidden gemCastles
Ząbkowice Śląskie
In 1467 the citizens of Wrocław besieged the castle at Ząbkowice Śląskie, but their stone cannonballs made no impression on walls almost 3 metres thick. They took the fortress only with the help of the "great gun" — a cannon weighing 80 hu…
Hidden gemTechnical monuments
Złoty Stok
In the 16th century the mines of Złoty Stok supplied, according to the site's operator, as much as 8 per cent of Europe's gold, and in total some 16 tonnes of pure gold were extracted here. Later the ore was used mainly to produce arsenic.…
Hidden gemViewpoints
Ząbkowice Śląskie
The Leaning Tower of Ząbkowice Śląskie stands 34 m tall and leans 2.14 m off the vertical, making it the most tilted tower in Poland. Nicknamed the "Silesian Pisa", it is also open to visitors: 139 steps lead to the top. A visit also revea…
Hidden gemLandscape parks
Wałbrzych
Książ Castle stands on a rocky spur above the gorge of the Pełcznica River, and it is this mountain-like landscape within the city limits of Wałbrzych that Książ Landscape Park protects. Its 3,155 hectares hold deep ravines, beech woods, t…
Hidden gemMuseums
Jaworzyna Śląska
If you lined up this museum's entire rolling stock in a single row, it would fill about two kilometres of track. The Railway Museum of Silesia (Muzeum Kolejnictwa na Śląsku) in Jaworzyna Śląska occupies a fan-shaped engine shed from 1907 a…